Penguin Books Home
E-COMM CUSTOMERS
February 04, 2012
 
         
         




HOME > NEWS > NEWS ARCHIVE

   

SOUTH AFRICA’S BRAVE NEW WORLD- R. W. JOHNSON


This COMBATIVE, incisive work on South Africa is set to change the way people think about the ‘Rainbow Nation’.
 
SOUTH AFRICA’SBRAVE NEW WORLD
R.W. JOHNSON

Nelson Mandela's inauguration as president of South Africa in 1994 seemed to usher in an age of peaceful, rational change. In this updated edition, R. W. Johnson explains how this was not to be. The profound damage of apartheid and the country's new leaders - in exile or prison for much of their adult lives - were a disastrous combination that poisoned everything from big business to education and AIDS policy to relations with Zimbabwe.
 
At the heart of the book lies the figure of Thabo Mbeki, whose presidency led to catastrophic failure on almost every front. In South Africa's Brave New World Johnson reveals how Mbeki and those around him brought South Africa close to 'failed state' status - and explores the implications for its future.
 
Included in this paperback edition of SOUTH AFRICA’S BRAVE NEW WORLD is a chapter dedicated to the most recent developments in South Africa’s political history, entitled ‘The Zuma Era’.
  
'South Africa's Brave New World is both a tour de force and a tour de horizon of South Africa's uneven journey since 1994 and the ascent of the ANC to government. It is a tale, told with verve and in no-holds-barred style which lifts the lid on a range of topics which have been semi-buried by the miasma of political correctness which has engulfed the country since the advent of democracy... An essential contribution to South Africa's history-in-the-making.' - Tony Leon
 
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R.W. Johnson has spent much of his life thinking and writing about South Africa. An anti-apartheid activist since his teens, he is one of the few people alive who heard public speeches given by both Verwoerd and Mandela before the latter was imprisoned. An ANC supporter, he narrowly escaped jail before arriving in England as a Rhodes Scholar. He went on to become an Emeritus  Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1977 his seminal book How Long Will South Africa Survive? was published. Johnson's long exile left him with few illusions about the ANC and its Communist party allies, but with South Africa's liberation he returned to live in the new South Africa, and headed the Helen Suzman Foundation. R.W. Johnson is the South Africa correspondent for the Sunday Times in London.

« Back
   

  
Win 1 of 2 copies of The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks